by Ellen Wood
Her face was more flushed than it had been throughout the interview. He spoke quietly now, quite in an equal tone of reasoning; it was his way when the ill-temper was upon him: and the calmer he spoke, the more cutting were his words. He need not have told her this.
“What was the secret?” she inquired, in a low tone.
“Nay, I can’t explain all; they did not take me into their confidence. They did not even take you; better, perhaps that they had though, as things have turned out, or seem to be turning. There’s some disreputable secret attaching to the Hare family, and Carlyle was acting in it, under the rose, for Mrs. Hare. She could not seek out Carlyle herself, so she sent the young lady. That’s all I know.”
“How did you know it?”
“I had reason to think so.”
“What reason? I must request you to tell me.”
“I overheard scraps of their conversation now and then in those meetings, and so gathered my information.”
“You told a different tale to me, Sir Francis,” was her remark, as she turned her indignant eyes toward him.
Sir Francis laughed.
“All stratagems are fair in love and war.”
She dared not immediately trust herself to reply, and a silence ensued. Sir Francis broke it, pointing with his left thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the cradle.
“What have you named that young article there?”
“The name which ought to have been his by inheritance— ‘Francis Levison,’” was her icy answer.
“Let’s see — how old is he now?”
“He was born on the last day of August.”
Sir Francis threw up his arms and stretched himself, as if a fit of idleness had overtaken him; then advanced to the cradle and pulled down the clothes.
“Who is he like, Isabel? My handsome self?”
“Were he like you in spirit, I would pray that he might die ere he could speak, or think!” she burst forth. And then remembering the resolution marked out for herself, subsided outwardly into calmness again.
“What else?” retorted Sir Francis. “You know my disposition pretty well by this time, Isabel, and may be sure that if you deal out small change to me, you will get it back again with interest.”
She made no reply. Sir Francis put the clothes back over the sleeping child, returned to the fire, and stood a few moments with his back to it.
“Is my room prepared for me, do you know?” he presently asked.
“No, it is not,” she quietly rejoined. “These apartments are mine now; they have been transferred into my name, and they can never again afford you accommodation. Will you be so obliging — I am not strong — as to hand me that writing case?”
Sir Francis walked to the table she indicated, which was at the far end of the great barn of a room, and taking the writing-case from it, gave it to her.
She reached her keys from the stand at her elbow, unlocked the case, and took from it some bank-notes.
“I received these from you a month ago,” she said. “They came by post.”
“And never had the grace to acknowledge them,” he returned, in a sort of mock reproachful tone.
“Forty pounds. That was the amount, was it not?”
“I believe so.”
“Allow me to return them to you. Count them.”
“Return them to me — for what?” inquired Sir Francis, in amazement.
“I have no longer anything whatever to do with you in any way. Do not make my arm ache, holding out these notes to you so long! Take them!”
Sir Francis took the notes from her hand and placed them on a stand near to her.
“If it be your wish that all relations should end between us, why, let it be so,” he said. “I must confess I think it may be the wisest course, as things have come to this pass; for a cat and dog life, which would seemingly be ours, is not agreeable. Remember, though, that it is your doing, not mine. But you cannot think I am going to see you starve, Isabel. A sum — we will fix upon the amount amicably — shall be placed to your credit half-yearly, and—”
“I beg of you to cease,” she passionately interrupted. “What do you take me for?”
“Take you for! Why, how can you live? You have no fortune — you must receive assistance from some one.”
“I will not receive it from you. If the whole world denied me, and I could find no help from strangers, or means of earning my own bread, and it was necessary that I should still exist, I would apply to my husband for means, rather than to you. In saying this, it ought to convince you that the topic may cease.”
“Your husband!” sarcastically rejoined Sir Francis. “Generous man!”
A flush, deep and painful, dyed her cheeks. “I should have said my late husband. You need not have reminded me of the mistake.”
“If you will accept nothing for yourself, you must for the child. He, at any rate, falls to my share. I shall give you a few hundred a year with him.”
She beat her hands before her, as if beating off the man and his words. “Not a farthing, now or ever. Were you to attempt to send money to him, I would throw it into the nearest river. Whom do you take me for? What do you take me for?” she repeated, rising in her bitter mortification. “If you have put me beyond the pale of the world, I am still Lord Mount Severn’s daughter!”
“You did as much toward putting yourself beyond its pale as—”
“Don’t I know it? Have I not said so?” she sharply interrupted. And then she sat, striving to calm herself, clasping together her shaking hands.
“Well, if you will persist in this perverse resolution, I cannot mend it,” resumed Sir Francis. “In a little time you may probably wish to recall it; in which case a line, addressed to me at my banker’s, will—”
Lady Isabel drew herself up. “Put away those notes, if you please,” she interrupted, not allowing him to finish his sentence.
He took out his pocket-book and placed the bank notes within it.
“Your clothes — those you left here when you went to England — you will have the goodness to order Pierre to take away this afternoon. And now, Sir Francis, I believe that is all: we will part.”
“To remain mortal enemies from henceforth? Is that to be it?”
“To be strangers,” she replied, correcting him. “I wish you a good day.”
“So you will not even shake hands with me, Isabel?”
“I would prefer not.”
And thus they parted. Sir Francis left the room, but not immediately the house. He went into a distant apartment, and, calling the servants before him — there were but two — gave them each a year’s wages in advance— “That they might not have to trouble miladi for money,” he said to them. Then he paid a visit to the landlord, and handed him, likewise a year’s rent in advance, making the same remark. After that, he ordered dinner at a hotel, and the same night he and Pierre departed on their journey home again, Sir Francis thanking his lucky star that he had so easily got rid of a vexatious annoyance.
And Lady Isabel? She passed her evening alone, sitting in the same place, close to the fire and the sparks. The attendant remonstrated that miladi was remaining up too late for her strength, but miladi ordered her and her remonstrances into an adjoining room.
When Lady Isabel lay down to rest, she sank into a somewhat calmer sleep than she had known of late; also into a dream. She thought she was back at East Lynne — not back, in one sense, but that she seemed never to have gone away from it — walking in the flower garden with Mr. Carlyle, while the three children played on the lawn. Her arm was within her husband’s, and he was relating something to her. What the news was, she could not remember afterward, excepting that it was connected with the office and old Mr. Dill, and that Mr. Carlyle laughed when he told it. They appeared to be interrupted by the crying of Archibald; and, in turning to the lawn to ask what was the matter, she awoke. Alas! It was the actual crying of her own child which awoke her — this last child — the ill-fated little being in the cradle besid
e her. But, for a single instant, she forgot recent events and doings, she believed she was indeed in her happy home at East Lynne, a proud woman, an honored wife. As recollection flashed across her, with its piercing stings, she gave vent to a sharp cry of agony, of unavailing despair.
CHAPTER XXVI.
ALONE FOR EVERMORE.
A surprise awaited Lady Isabel Vane. It was on a windy day in the following March that a traveller arrived at Grenoble, and inquired his way of a porter, to the best hotel in the place, his French being such as only an Englishman can produce.
“Hotel? Let’s see,” returned the man, politely, but with native indifference. “There are two hotels, nearly contiguous to each other, and monsieur would find himself comfortable at either. There is the Tross Dauphins, and there is the Ambassadeurs.”
“Monsieur” chose haphazard, the Hotel des Ambassadeurs, and was conducted to it. Shortly after his arrival there, he inquired his road to the Place Grenette, and was offered to be shown: but he preferred that it should be described to him, and to go alone. The Place was found, and he thence turned to the apartments of Lady Isabel Vane.
Lady Isabel was sitting where you saw her the previous December — in the precise spot — courting the warmth of the fire, and it seemed, courting the sparks also, for they appeared as fond of her as formerly. The marvel was, how she had escaped spontaneous combustion; but there she was yet, and her clothes likewise. You might think that but a night had passed, when you looked at the room, for it wore precisely the same aspect now, as then; everything was the same, even to the child’s cradle in the remote corner, partially hidden by the bed-curtains, and the sleeping child in it. Lady Isabel’s progress toward recovery was remarkably lingering, as is frequently the case when mind and body are both diseased. She was so sitting when Susanne entered the room, and said that a “Monsieur Anglais” had arrived in the town to see her, and was waiting below, in the saloon.
Lady Isabel was startled. An English gentleman — to see her!
English for certain, was Susanne’s answer, for she had difficulty to comprehend his French.
Who could be desirous to see her? One out of the world and forgotten! “Susanne,” she cried aloud, a thought striking her, “it is never Sir Fran — it is not monsieur!”
“Not in the least like monsieur,” complacently answered Susanne. “It is a tall, brave English gentleman, proud and noble looking like a prince.”
Every pulse within Lady Isabel’s body throbbed rebelliously: her heart bounded till it was like to burst her side, and she turned sick with astonishment.
“Tall, brave, noble?” could that description apply to any but Mr. Carlyle? Strange that so unnatural an idea should have occurred to her; it would not have done so in a calmer moment. She rose, tottered across the chamber, and prepared to descend. Susanne’s tongue was let loose at the proceeding.
“Was miladi out of her senses? To attempt going downstairs would be a pretty ending, for she’d surely fall by the way. Miladi knew that the bottom step was of lead, and that no head could pitch down upon that, without ever never being a head any more, except in the hospitals. Let miladi sit still in her place and she’d bring the monsieur up. What did it signify? He was not a young petit maitre, to quiz things: he was fifty, if he was a day: his hair already turned to fine gray.”
This set the question touching Mr. Carlyle at rest, and her heart stilled again. The next moment she was inwardly laughing in her bitter mockery at her insensate folly. Mr. Carlyle come to see her! Her! Francis Levison might be sending over some man of business, regarding the money question, was her next thought: if so, she should certainly refuse to see him.
“Go down to the gentleman and ask him his name Susanne. Ask also from whence he came.”
Susanne disappeared, and returned, and the gentleman behind her. Whether she had invited him, or whether he had chosen to come uninvited, there he was. Lady Isabel caught a glimpse, and flung her hands over her burning cheeks of shame. It was Lord Mount Severn.
“How did you find out where I was?” she gasped, when some painful words had been uttered on both sides.
“I went to Sir Francis Levison and demanded your address. Certain recent events implied that he and you must have parted, and I therefore deemed it time to inquire what he had done with you.”
“Since last July,” she interrupted. Lifting up her wan face, now colorless again. “Do not think worse of me than I am. He was here in December for an hour’s recriminating interview, and we parted for life.”
“What have you heard of him lately?”
“Not anything. I never know what is passing in the world at home; I have no newspaper, no correspondence; and he would scarcely be so bold as to write to me again.”
“I shall not shock you, then by some tidings I bring you regarding him,” returned Lord Mount Severn.
“The greatest shock to me would be to hear that I should ever again be subjected to the sight of him,” she answered.
“He is married.”
“Heaven have pity on his poor wife!” was all the comment of Lady Isabel.
“He has married Alice Challoner.”
She lifted her head, then, in simple surprise. “Alice? Not Blanche?”
“The story runs that he has played Blanche very false. That he has been with her much during the last three or four months, leading on her expectations; and then suddenly proposed for her younger sister. I know nothing of the details myself; it is not likely; and I heard nothing, until one evening at the club I saw the announcement of the marriage for the following day at St. George’s. I was at the church the next morning before he was.”
“Not to stop it; not to intercept the marriage!” breathlessly uttered the Lady Isabel.
“Certainly not. I had no power to attempt anything of the sort. I went to demand an answer to my question — what he had done with you, and where you were. He gave me this address, but said he knew nothing of your movements since December.”
There was a long silence. The earl appeared to be alternately ruminating and taking a survey of the room. Isabel sat with her head down.
“Why did you seek me out?” she presently broke forth. “I am not worth it. I have brought enough disgrace upon your name.”
“And upon your husband’s and upon your children’s,” he rejoined, in the most severe manner, for it was not in the nature of the Earl of Mount Severn to gloss over guilt. “Nevertheless it is incumbent upon me, as your nearest blood relative, to see after you, now that you are alone again, and to take care, as far as I can, that you do not lapse lower.”
He might have spared her that stab. But she scarcely understood him. She looked at him, wondering whether she did understand.
“You have not a shilling in the world,” he resumed. “How do you propose to live?”
“I have some money yet. When—”
“His money?” sharply and haughtily interposed the earl.
“No,” she indignantly replied. “I am selling my trinkets. Before they are all gone, I shall look out to get a living in some way; by teaching, probably.”
“Trinkets!” repeated Lord Mount Severn. “Mr. Carlyle told me that you carried nothing away with you from East Lynne.”
“Nothing that he had given me. These were mine before I married. You have seen Mr. Carlyle, then?” she faltered.
“Seen him?” echoed the indignant earl. “When such a blow was dealt him by a member of my family, could I do less than hasten to East Lynne to tender my sympathies? I went with another subject too — to discover what could have been the moving springs of your conduct; for I protest, when the black tidings reached me, I believed that you must have gone mad. You were one of the last whom I should have feared to trust. But I learned nothing, and Carlyle was as ignorant as I. How could you strike him such a blow?”
Lower and lower drooped her head, brighter shone the shame on her hectic cheek. An awful blow to Mr. Carlyle it must have been; she was feeling it in all its bitter inten
sity. Lord Mount Severn read her repentant looks.
“Isabel,” he said, in a tone which had lost something of its harshness, and it was the first time he had called her by her Christian name, “I see that you are reaping the fruits. Tell me how it happened. What demon prompted you to sell yourself to that bad man?”
“He is a bad man!” she exclaimed. “A base, heartless man!”
“I warned you at the commencement of your married life to avoid him; to shun all association with him; not to admit him to your house.”
“His coming to East Lynne was not my doing,” she whispered. “Mr. Carlyle invited him.”
“I know he did. Invited him in his unsuspicious confidence, believing his wife to be his wife, a trustworthy woman of honor,” was the severe remark.
She did not reply; she could not gainsay it; she only sat with her meek face of shame and her eyelids drooping.
“If ever a woman had a good husband, in every sense of the word, you had, in Carlyle; if ever man loved his wife, he loved you. How could you so requite him?”
She rolled, in a confused manner, the corners of her warm shawl over her unconscious fingers.
“I read the note you left for your husband. He showed it to me; the only one, I believe, to whom he did show it. It was to him entirely inexplicable, it was so to me. A notion had been suggested to him, after your departure, that his sister had somewhat marred your peace at East Lynne, and he blamed you much, if it was so, for not giving him your full confidence on the point, that he might set matters on the right footing. But it was impossible, and there was the evidence in the note besides, that the presence of Miss Carlyle at East Lynne could be any excuse for your disgracing us all and ruining yourself.”
“Do not let us speak of these things,” said Lady Isabel, faintly. “It cannot redeem the past.”
“But I must speak of them; I came to speak of them,” persisted the earl; “I could not do it as long as that man was here. When these inexplicable things take place in the career of a woman, it is a father’s duty to look into motives and causes and actions, although the events in themselves may be, as in this case, irreparable. Your father is gone, but I stand in his place, there is no one else to stand in it.”
